Tuesday, 23 June 2015

Four for Father's Day

Bob and I both made cards for our Dads last week, and we both helped each other, so I thought I'd share the results.

For the first time ever, Bob came home from nursery with a thing he'd made, and it was this Father's Day card featuring his footprint:

He hasn't wanted to craft much at home since the weather has been nice, and he'd declined when I suggested making a card the other day. I felt a little pang of envy as he showed his creation first to me and then to Daddy - he's only away from me for 4 hours a week, and I'd missed a crafting opportunity with him. I needn't have been sad though, it seems to have reminded him how much he enjoys creating things, and the next day he asked if he could help me while I was making a card for my Father in Law.

I was working with a card kit, and I was almost finished, but the card had a shaped front and paper to look like sky for the inside of the card. To make it something Bob could do and would enjoy, I suggested we make a sky instead, using chalks. It's a very simple technique - just dab some chalk onto a blob of cotton wool and do random swirls and streaks on some card. As you can see, even 3 year olds can do it - it made my 3yo very happy :-)

The sky is made of mostly blue chalk swirls, but with a few grey streaks here and there.

Spray the chalk with hairspray to fix it. You can get special artists fixative, but it smells nasty and costs a lot more.

I think more than 3 layers of decoupage can look a bit 'heavy', so I generally use alternate layers on my projects. As well as being more pleasing to my eye, doing this means your card doesn't have to go as a fat letter, and you can make another card from the unused layers.

A couple of days later, Bob asked to "play with your tools and make some nice shapes Mummy". He likes quite a few of my tools, but his favourite is the Big Shot. Looking for some paper, I spotted some that Bob had painted while playing a while ago, and I suggested a nesting star die because it would give him lots of shapes quickly. He seemed to get a real kick out of separating the stars and he loved spraying them with glue. He positioned them all himself.

Crafting notes: Bob mixed brown and blue paints on standard printer paper and I really like the effect.

Bob saved some of the stars he made so he could stick them in the card I made for my Dad. I used more decoupage from the "Home to Nest" range for this card, it's one of my all time favourite collections. Here's the last card: